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Kulin Its Neighbours

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Kulin Its Neighbours Kulin and its neighbours Barry J. Blake La Trobe University1 Original version 2009 This version 2011 The following report on the languages of the south-eastern mainland of Australia is based on nineteenth century sources and Hercus 1986. It covers work done under an ARC grant for reconstructing Kulin (1999-2002) and earlier work done under other ARC grants. It complements a series of other publications and partly overlaps with them. These are: Blake 1991, Blake & Reid 1998a, b, 1999 and 2002, Blake, Clark and and Reid 1998, Blake, Clark and Krishna-Pillay 1998, Blake 2003a, Blake 2003b, Blake 2011 and Blake, Hercus & Morey (to appear). Contents 1. Lexico-statistical classification 2. Phonology 2.1 Inventory 2.2 Consonant-final nouns 2.2.1 Truncation 2.2.2 Nasal augment 2.3 Vowel-final nouns 2.4 Lower Murray languages 2.5 Sound correspondences 2.6 Other changes 3. Morphology 3.1 Pronouns with a common base 3.2 Pronouns with singular pronouns as a base 4. Genetic relationships 4.1 Percentages of common roots 4.2 Bunganditj and Warrnambool 4.3 Kulin 4.3.1 Kulin: Grammatical forms 4.3.2 Kulin: Lexicon 4.3.3 Mathi group 4.3.4 Colac 4.4 Bunganditj, Warrnambool and Kulin 4.5 Kulin’s other neighbours 5. Conclusion 1 I would like to thank Gavan Breen, R.M.W. ‘Bob’ Dixon and Stephen Morey for useful comments on the first draft. 2 List of Tables Table 1: Victoria: percentages of common vocabulary Table 2: Consonants Table 3: Word-final consonants in Kulin Table 4: Latent consonants Table 5: Loss of final consonant in southeastern mainland Table 6: Final nasals Table 7: the -i augment Table 8: Dhudhuroa Table 9: Lower Murray languages Table 10: rt-tj-r correspondence Table 11: Loss of r before a consonant Table 12: Loss of rr before a consonant Table 13: Loss of intervocalic r Table 14: Intervocalic nasal correspondences Table 15: Kulin pronouns with a common base Table 16: Colac, Warrnambool and Bunganditj pronouns Table 17: Comparisons with Bunganditj by semantic fields Table 18: Comparisons with Warrnambool by semantic fields Table 19: Grammatical forms Table 20: Pronouns Table 21: Oblique bound pronouns Table 22: Kulin grammatical forms Table 23: Kulin possessor forms Table 24: Kulin subject enclitics Table 25: Kulin percentages of common vocabulary Table 26: Distinctive grammatical forms in the Mathi group Table 27: Distinctive lexical roots in the Mathi group Table 28: Comparisons with Colac by semantic fields Table 29: Kulin, Bunganditj and Warrnambool roots found elsewhere Table 30: Lower and Upper Murray Map 1: Victoria: vowel- and consonant-final nouns Map 2: Warrnambool dialects 3 List of abbreviations Ban Bandjalang Bu Bunganditj (Buwandik) Co Colac Dhu Dhudhuroa Dja Djadjawurrung EK Eastern Kulin Gipps Gippsland Kau Kaurna Ke Keramin LL Letji-Letji MM Mathi-Mathi Ngar Ngarigu Ngaya Ngayawang NSW New South Wales NT Northern Territory P Wati-Wati (Piangil dialect) Pall Pallanganmiddang Q Queensland SA South Australia SH Wati-Wati (Swan hill dialect) Tas Tasmania Thag Thagungwurrung Tjap Tjapwurrung Vic Victoria Wa Wathawurrung WA Western Australia Warr Warrnambool WB Wemba-Bereba (Hercus’ Wemba-Wemba 1986 plus similar nineteenth century sources) We Werkaya (Wergaia) WW Wemba-Wemba Wim Wimmera (Hercus’ Wergaya 1986 plus similar nineteenth century sources) Wira Wiradjuri WK Western Kulin Woi Woiwurrung Wulu Wuluwurrung 4 Yab Yabula-Yabula Yar Yaralde Yi Yitha-Yitha Yu Yu-Yu YY Yota-Yota (Yota-Yota) Map 1: Vowel-final and consonant-final tongues of south eastern mainland Australia 5 1. Lexico-statistical classification The most widely used classification of the languages of the Australian mainland recognises 238 languages. These have been classified on the basis of lexicostatistics into 29 families with one family, Pama-Nyungan covering most of the mainland except for the Kimberleys and most of the Top End (O’Grady, Voegelin and Voegelin 1966, O’Grady, Wurm and Hale 1966). Within families there are groups, subgroups, languages and dialects. Strictly one should say within lexicostatistical families there are lexicostatistical groups, lexicostatistical subgroups, languages and dialects, since terms such as ‘family’ and ‘group’ when used with reference to Indo-European and certain other well-studied families refer to entities determined on the basis of shared innovations. The classification groups the languages of the mainland into the ‘Australian Macro- phylum’, and, indeed, the languages of the mainland look as if they are genetically related. There are a few score of roots found in every ‘area’ of the country, what Capell called Common Australian (Capell 1956: 80ff). A comparison of a pair of languages hundreds of miles or more apart typically yields a figure of around 10-15% made up of some of these very widespread roots such as tjina ‘foot’, kuna ‘faeces’, pula ‘two’, n(h)a ‘to see’, yana ‘to go’, mana ‘to get’, ‘to bring’ and ngu-/wu- ‘to give’ plus a few other matches more or less peculiar to the pair chosen. Capell took these scattered matches to be ‘the tenuous remains of former linkages rather than simply coincidences’ (Capell 1956: 95). There are also widespread grammatical roots including nga ‘first person’, n(h)u ‘third person’ and –ku, which has dative or similar functions. The languages of Tasmania were not included in the Australian macro-phylum in the O’Grady et al. classification. Crowley and Dixon (1981) classified the meagre sources for Tasmania into six languages. They found that there were ‘insufficient cognates and systematic correspondences to justify an even tentative hypothesis of genetic relationship’ with other Australian languages (Crowley and Dixon 1981: 395). The original classification of the mainland languages has been modified in some ways. Firstly, there has been some lumping among the non-Pama-Nyungan or Northern languages (See Dixon 2002 and papers in Evans ed. 2003). Secondly, Blake 1987 points out that one set of pronouns is characteristic of the Northern (non-Pama-Nyungan) languages and another partly different set is characteristic of the Pama-Nyungan languages. However, this involves reclassifying the Tangkic group as belonging within Northern, classifying Yanyula, a one- language family in the earlier classification, as a member of the Warluwaric (or Ngarna) group of Pama-Nyungan, and taking the Karrwan family, which consists of Karrwa (Garrawa) and 6 Wanyi, to be an unclassified group, i.e. as belonging neither to Northern or Pama-Nyungan, since the two languages that make up the family have some characteristically Northern pronouns and some characteristically Pama-Nyungan pronouns.2 The term phylum as in ‘Australian Macro-phylum’ has been criticised as vague and of no genetic significance, but ‘Australian Macro-phylum’ is appropriate in that it demarcates a set of languages distinct from all others yet sharing similarities that may result from a common genetic inheritance, diffusion, or, more likely, a mixture of both. Recently Dixon (2002) has rejected Pama-Nyungan as any kind of significant genetic entity. He claims, for instance, that the pronouns that characterise Pama-Nyungan are the result of diffusion. Lexicostatistics was originally conceived of as a means of determining genetic relationship. Ideally counts were confined to basic vocabulary, which was considered relatively resistant to borrowing, and the results were taken to be a measure of relative genetic proximity. In Australia, lexicostatistics is often based on whatever vocabulary is to hand, and it is often done in advance of any study of phonological correspondences. This means that a pair of words in two languages may be counted as a plus on the basis of resemblance. It is well known that cognates do not always resemble one another; conversely words that resemble one another may not be cognate. However, a lexicostatistical classification based on resemblance is a valid means of obtaining a synchronic account of relative similarity. If one is aiming at such a classification, there is no need to confine oneself to basic vocabulary, but it should be noted that the results hold only for the particular choice of vocabulary on which the comparisons are based. For historical study the mosaic resulting from lexico-statistical comparison represents an explanandum, a pattern to be explained in terms of genetic ancestry or diffusion. Lexicostatistical counts based on Australian data tend not to contain too large a proportion of words likely to be borrowed (words for items of material culture, for instance) and where the figures obtained are quite low, below 25%, for instance, they certainly indicate the absence of a close genetic relationship. Conversely, where they are high, say over 75%, they indicate a high likelihood of genetic proximity. If the aim is to get a guide to genetic proximity, counts can include a higher proportion of words less likely to be borrowed and grammatical forms. In Australia certain functions such as ergative and locative case are marked in a large number of languages and can form a basis for counting with a view to establishing genetic proximity. However, it should be noted that to say that two languages are genetically proximate does not mean that they necessarily belong to the same subgroup. Two relatively distant branches of a tree could share a high proportion of roots through being conservative, through sharing relics that complement innovations in other branches. 2 Harvey 2009 assesses the evidence and comes to the conclusion that the Karrwan (Garrwan) family is a Pama- Nyungan family. 7 The purpose of the present paper is to say something about the genetic proximity of the languages of Victoria and nearby areas, taking the Kulin languages of western and central Victoria as a focal point. I will ignore the O’Grady et al. classification, since it is flawed on some points, and take as a starting point the classification of Dixon 2002, which groups some hundreds of sources into 17 languages on or south of the Murray.3 A lexicostatistical comparison of 10 of these languages is shown in Table 1.
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